Yokuts | |
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Yokutsan, Mariposa | |
Region | San Joaquin Valley, California |
Ethnicity | Yokuts |
Native speakers | 50 (including semispeakers) (2007) [1] |
Yok-Utian?
| |
Dialects |
|
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | yok |
Glottolog | yoku1255 |
ELP | Yokuts |
![]() Pre-contact distribution of the Yokuts language |
Yokuts, formerly known as Mariposa, is an endangered language family spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people. The speakers of Yokuts languages were severely affected by disease, missionaries, and the Gold Rush. While descendants of Yokuts speakers currently number in the thousands, all languages apart from Valley Yokuts are now extinct.
The Yawelmani dialect of Valley Yokuts has been a focus of much linguistic research.
Yokuts consists of half a dozen languages. An estimated forty linguistically distinct groups existed before Euro-American contact.
Glottolog finds at least four distinct languages: Palewyami Yokuts, Buena Vista Yokuts, Northern Yokuts, Tule-Kaweah Yokuts. [1]
Almost all Yokuts dialects are extinct, as noted above. Those that are still spoken are endangered.
Until recent years, Choinimni, Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Kechayi, Tachi and Yawelmani all had a few fluent speakers and a variable number of partial speakers. Choynimni went extinct in 2017. Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Tachi, and Yawelmani were being taught to at least a few children during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Chukchansi is now a written language, with its own alphabet developed on a federal grant. Chukchansi also has a phrase book and dictionary that are partially completed. In May 2012, the Linguistics Department of Fresno State University received a $1 million grant to compile a Chukchansi dictionary and grammar texts, [3] and to "provide support for scholarships, programs, and efforts to assemble native texts and create a curriculum for teaching the language so it can be brought back into social and ritual use." [4]
Yokuts is a key member in the proposed Penutian language stock. Some linguists consider most relationships within Penutian to be undemonstrated (cf. Campbell 1997 [5] ). Others consider a genetic relationship between Yokuts, Utian, Maiduan, Wintuan, and a number of Oregon languages to be definite (cf. DeLancey and Golla 1997 [6] ). Regardless of higher-order disagreement, Callaghan (1997) provides strong evidence uniting Yokuts and the Utian languages as branches of a Yok-Utian language family. [7]
The term "Delta Yokuts" has recently been introduced in lieu of the longer "Far Northern Valley Yokuts" for the dialect spoken by the people in the present Stockton and Modesto vicinities of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, California, prior to their removal to Mission San Jose between 1810 and 1827. Of interest, Delta Yokuts contains a large number of words with no cognates in any of the other dialects, or for that matter in the adjacent Utian languages, although its syntax is typically Northern Valley Yokuts. [8] This anomaly has led Whistler (cited by Golla 2007 [9] ) to suggest, "The vocabulary distinctive of some of the Delta Yokuts dialects may reflect substratal influence from pre-proto-Yokuts or from an extinct Yok-Utian language." Golla [10] suggests that a "pre-proto-Yokuts" homeland was in the Great Basin, citing a rich plant and animal vocabulary for a dry environment and a close connection between Yokuts basketry styles and those of prehistoric central Nevada.
Proto-Yokuts | |
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Reconstruction of | Yokuts languages |
Proto-Yokuts reconstructions from Whistler and Golla (1986): [2]
gloss | Proto-Yokuts |
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acorn | *pʰutʰuʂ |
beaver | *t’ɨːpɨkʰ ~ *ʈ’ɨːpɨkʰ |
blood | *hɨːpa-ʔ |
bone | *c’iy |
child | *witʰip |
child (diminutive) | *wicʰip |
coyote | *kʰay’iw |
eight | *mun’us |
eye | *sasa-ʔ |
fingernail | *xiːsix |
fire | *ʔoʂitʰ |
fish | *lopʰiʈʰ |
flea | *p’aːk’il |
friend | *noːcʰi |
head louse | *tʰihiʈʰ |
heart | *ʔuʂik’ |
horn | *ɨʂɨl’ |
mountain | *lomitʰ |
mouth | *sama-ʔ |
north | *xosim |
nose | *ʈʰɨŋɨk’ |
shaman | *ʔaŋʈʰiw |
skunk | *cʰox |
sky | *ʈʰipʰin |
star | *c’ayatas |
string | *c’ikiy |
tears | *maŋal |
three | *ʂoːpʰin |
two | *poŋiy |
water | *ʔilik’ |
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), with supplementary sound recordings.The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken mainly in California, Arizona, and Baja California.
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and limited documentation.
Alsea or Alsean was two closely related speech varieties spoken along the central Oregon coast until the early 1950s. They are sometimes taken to be different languages, but it is difficult to be sure given the poor state of attestation; Mithun believes they were probably dialects of a single language.
Utian is a family of Indigenous languages spoken in Northern California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages of the Utian language family. It has recently been argued that the Utian languages and Yokuts languages are sub-families of the Yok-Utian language family. Utian and Yokutsan have traditionally been considered part of the Penutian language phylum.
Wintuan is a family of languages spoken in the Sacramento Valley of central Northern California.
Valley Yokuts is a dialect cluster of the Yokutsan language family of California.
The Yokuts are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. Yokuts is both plural and singular; Yokut, while common, is erroneous. 'Yokut' should only be used when referring specifically to the Tachi Yokut Tribe of Lemoore. Some of their descendants prefer to refer to themselves by their respective tribal names; they reject the term Yokuts, saying that it is an exonym invented by English-speaking settlers and historians. Conventional sub-groupings include the Foothill Yokuts, Northern Valley Yokuts, and Southern Valley Yokuts.
Maiduan is a small endangered language family of northeastern California.
The Yuki–Wappo or Yukian languages are a small language family of western California consisting of two distantly related languages, both now extinct.
The Karkin language is an extinct Ohlone language. It was formerly spoken in north central California, but by the 1950s there were no more native speakers. The language was historically spoken by the Karkin people, who lived in the Carquinez Strait region in the northeast portion of the San Francisco Bay estuary.
Yok-Utian is a proposed language family of California. It consists of the Yokuts language and the Utian language family.
Klamath, also Klamath–Modoc and historically Lutuamian, is a Native American language spoken around Klamath Lake in what is now southern Oregon and northern California. It is the traditional language of the Klamath and Modoc peoples, each of whom spoke a dialect of the language. By 1998, only one native speaker remained, and by 2003, this last fluent Klamath speaker who was living in Chiloquin, Oregon, was 92 years old. As of 2006 there were no fluent native speakers of either the Klamath or Modoc dialects; however, as of 2019, revitalization efforts are underway with the goal of creating new speakers.
Tamcan or Tammukan was a local tribe of Delta Yokuts-speaking natives in the U.S. that once lived on the lower reaches of California's San Joaquin River in what is now eastern Contra Costa County and western San Joaquin County, California. The Tamcans were absorbed into the system of the Spanish missions in California in the early nineteenth century; they moved to Mission San José, near the shore of San Francisco Bay, between 1806 and 1811. At the mission, they and their descendants intermarried with speakers of the San Francisco Bay Ohlone, Plains Miwok, and Patwin Indian languages. Mission Indian survivors of these mixed groups gathered at Alisal, near Pleasanton in Contra Costa County, in the late nineteenth century.
The Ohlone languages, also known as Costanoan, form a small Indigenous language family historically spoken in Northern California, both in the southern San Francisco Bay Area and northern Monterey Bay area, by the Ohlone people. Along with the Miwok languages, they are members of the Utian language family. The most recent work suggests that Ohlone, Miwok, and Yokuts are branches of a Yok-Utian language family.
Southern Valley Yokuts is a dialect network within the Valley Yokuts division of the Yokutsan languages spoken in the Central Valley of California.
Victor Golla (1939–2021) was a linguist who specialized in the indigenous languages of California and Oregon, especially the Pacific Coast Athabaskan subgroup of the Athabaskan language family and the languages of the region that belong to the Penutian phylum. He was emeritus professor of anthropology at Humboldt State University and lived in Trinidad, California.
Hometwoli was a dialect of Buena Vista Yokuts spoken in the southern portion of the Tulare Basin of California near Kern Lake.
Northern Valley Yokuts is a dialect network within the Valley Yokuts division of the Yokutsan languages spoken in the Central Valley of California. Among the languages belonging to the network are Chawchila, Nopṭinṭe, Kechayi, Dumna, Dalinchi, Toltichi, and Chukchansi. Of these, Kechayi, Dumna, Dalinchi, Toltichi, and Chukchansi are frequently grouped under the label Northern Hill dialects.
Yawelmani Yokuts is an endangered dialect of Southern Valley Yokuts historically spoken by the Yokuts living along the Kern River north of Kern Lake in the Central Valley of California. Today, most Yawelmani speakers live on or near the Tule River Reservation.
The Takelma–Kalapuyan languages are a proposed small language family that comprises the Kalapuyan languages and Takelma, which are spoken in the Willamette Valley and the Rogue Valley in the U.S. state of Oregon.
![]() | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(May 2022) |